A child’s fear of sleeping

How Tapping overcame a child’s fear of sleeping

Some years ago I was contacted by a mother whose daughter was not sleeping and she wanted to know if I could help. She explained what had happened and I felt it was an issue we could sort out using Tapping.

As the child was quite young, 6 years old, I decided to visit them at home. Young children, if having issues, may find it a bit scary to have to visit a strange place and person, so home may be the right and safe place for them.

I arrived at the house and the little girl was standing at the top of the stairs, she was happy to see me and showed me through to the lounge.

What was the problem? A few days earlier the mother was tidying up and a trowel fell off the shelf, landed on the top of her foot and cut it quite badly. There was a lot of blood, she made her way to the bathroom fainted and hit her head. All this was witnessed by the child who thought she was dead. Mum came round and they managed to call for help.

Mum was taken off to hospital and the little girl was left with a neighbour, but she was traumatised and upset. Mum was back home later that evening in time to put her to bed, but not to sleep. For three nights in a row she had not wanted to sleep in case mummy was taken away again.

I asked the little girl: “Why can’t you sleep?”

“I need to look after mummy.”

“Why do you need to look after mummy?”

“She might fall over again, I’m scared. It was my fault.”

“Why was it your fault?”

“Mummy was looking for my book.”

Tapping

I explained to her that we were going to play a little game that would help her to sleep. I asked her to copy my words – “I am a good girl” – and tap points on her head and collarbone gently with two fingers as she did so. We started:

1. Top of head

2. Inside of eyebrow

3. Outside of eyebrow

4. Under eye

5. Under nose

6. On the chin

7. Collar bone

At every point we repeated “I am a good girl”

Then we repeated the sequence again from number 1, this time with the words: “I am a very good girl”.

After this round which took approximately 30 seconds with a lot of giggling I asked: “How do you feel?”

“I feel OK.”

We then did the same sequence of tapping and changed the words to: “Mummy is safe”.

Then again with: “I am safe”.

‘How do you feel now?”

“I feel very good now.”

Then I asked if she thought she could sleep OK and that mummy would be OK. She thought she could. We talked about tapping on her hand (karate chop point) when she went to bed, using her own words about how she felt.

Mum was watching the process and I left her with a diagram of the tapping points. I also explained that if her daughter was still worried at bedtime then to ask her how she felt and use her child’s words to do the tapping round.

I called in a few days later and the little girl said: “That tapping thing really works, I slept all night”.

If you have a child that is having trouble sleeping because of a similar experience, or maybe you don’t really know why, then get in touch.